Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum believes Bill Clinton may have spread a rumor that his wife had a late-term abortion in the late 90s and covered it up.
“It was very upsetting to the family that the president . . . would think such a thing,” the Pennsylvania Republican tells National Review. “It just shows a darkness that I was surprised to see. And maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, but I was surprised to see that type of an attitude.”
Santorum’s pro-life credentials have endeared him to social conservatives ever since the former senator led the fight to override Clinton’s veto of a partial-birth–abortion ban in 1997, a political debate that played out just before the Santorums lost a child who was born prematurely after being diagnosed with a fatal birth defect. Santorum, a long-shot presidential candidate, is working to re-constitute the political coalition that made him a surprise winner of the Iowa Republican caucuses in 2012.
The abortion accusation resurfaced when the Washington Free Beacon reported that Clinton’s biographer, Taylor Branch, had inferred from his interviews with the former president that Clinton believed the Santorums had lied about the tragedy.
“[Clinton] said something cryptic about Santorum,” Branch recalled, per the report. “In retrospect, after he said that cryptic remark about his wife, I wondered if what he was saying was that it would be found out that what they said was actually an infant death was instead really an abortion.” (Read more from “Santorum Worries Bill Clinton Spread Abortion Rumor About His Wife” HERE)
Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.
Santorum Worries Bill Clinton Spread Abortion Rumor About His Wife